Notre Dame

[Blondbraid]

Has anyone else seen the horrible news?
Notre Dame is on fire, and is badly damaged too! I'm still struggling to take this in, that this building, which has withstood centuries, several wars and has been saved by Victor Hugo himself, has fallen victim to this.

And I never got the chance to see it in person before all this happened. 

[Sinitrena]

I have, and I'm devastated. I was lucky enough to visit Paris in 2013 and I will never forget the amazing masterpieces of art and architecture. 

But let's not think too much of the horrible pictures of the flames but remember the Notre-Dame that stood for 800 years and that will hopefully not be completely lost and that might be rebuild and stand strong again one day for another 800 years and more.

[Blondbraid]

Wow, that's some great pics!

Let's hope they can restore it!

[Khris]

Far-right fuckwits are already accusing Muslims of deliberately causing the fire.

[Stupot]

Yeah. This is sad news. I've also never been there up close. As Sinitrena says, they'll probably rebuild but it won't be anything like the old building. They'll probably feel the need to modernize it and it will look super sexy for about 10 years before going out of fashion.

[Snarky]

Man, what a loss to world heritage! I feel fortunate that I had a chance to visit several times before the destruction.

Presumably they will rebuild (and unlike Stupot, I would expect them to stay as true as possible to the old design), but it will never be the same. Though I do take some comfort from remembering a trip to Korea, where guides would point out buildings and bridges they said were hundreds of years old, that looked to be in remarkably good condition. When asked, they'd say something like "Oh yeah, it burned down a bunch of times, and was completely destroyed by the Japanese or the Korean War, but we always rebuilt it!" A matter of perspective...

[Gurok]

Far-right fuckwits are already accusing Muslims of deliberately causing the fire.

Shame also on everybody using it as a reason to talk about how they hate Catholics. I saw Catholic Church trending during the blaze and not for good reason.

I'm glad some of the priceless relics were saved.

Yeah. This is sad news. I've also never been there up close. As Sinitrena says, they'll probably rebuild but it won't be anything like the old building. They'll probably feel the need to modernize it and it will look super sexy for about 10 years before going out of fashion.

This is what I'm fearing most. Apparently, there was already one botched restoration.

[Ali]

What a relief to see that the windows have been preserved. And how sad that any BAD THING must be immediately followed by morons / truthers / bigots making it worse with their malicious opportunism.

[Jack]

And how sad that any BAD THING must be immediately followed by morons / truthers / bigots making it worse with their malicious opportunism.

Some people use every opportunity to spread their hatred.

[Khris]

Shut up

[Jack]

More pics:

[Mandle]

Quasimodo has tweeted that he is well and is rooming with the Phantom of the Opera for now.

[Stupot]

I read that they might be able to actually use a vdeo game to help rebuild the cathedral.

[milkanannan]

A real tragedy

[WHAM]

Good thing is that the damage to the interior was very limited. From what I've read and seen, the stone ceiling held up fine, except for a small section where the spire collapsed in. The fire inside was limited, however, and thus the damage minimal in that area.
A lot of the wooden artwork inside was spared destruction and damage.

Must have been a hell of a day for the fire crews, though, and I'd imagine a lot of places will look at this and start to reconsider the fire safety of other national monuments, at least for a while.

[Crimson Wizard]

Someone sent me this link: https://gigarama.ru/notredame/

[Jack]

Someone sent me this link: https://gigarama.ru/notredame/

The damage doesn't look as bad from out here.

I was looking at pictures earlier and wondered how long it would take to model every detail of the cathedral in 3D. Months... If not years. Truly an impressive building.

[Snarky]

Yeah, recreating every carving and bit of tracery of the whole building, whether physically or digitally, would certainly take many years. After all, it took centuries to create in the first place.

Fortunately it seems like most of the building escaped destruction, and there were high-resolution 3D scans taken of the structure in 2015. When combined with other documentation, it would seem possible in principle to recreate it at a very high level of accuracy.

I've also heard some experts worrying that the fire may have damaged the construction on a more fundamental level, given that heat can crack stone. Parts of the cathedral were already crumbling, which is why there was an ongoing restoration in the first place.

[WHAM]

I've also heard some experts worrying that the fire may have damaged the construction on a more fundamental level, given that heat can crack stone. Parts of the cathedral were already crumbling, which is why there was an ongoing restoration in the first place.

The thing is ancient and already in a state of disrepair, so this will likely be a concern for the near future. You can only do so much to maintain a structure without starting to replace it stone by stone, or by creating a permanent support structure that would pretty much ruin the aesthetic of such a historical structure.
Hell, I'm impressed a structure so vast and old is standing to begin with!

Another rather optimistic take on the outcome of the Notre Dame fire, this one by an Englishman:

[Mandarinas45]

Did you hear how Ubisoft reacted? The company will donate 500k into the building's reconstruction plans, and also, the Notre Dame model in Assassin Creed game will possibly be used as a basis for reconstruction plan! It's a tragedy, but at least we got the technology to recreate the magic from scratch...

Source:

https://www.eneba.com/blog/ubisoft-is-giving-away-assassins-creed-unity-for-free-after-notre-dame-fire/

[Jack]

Did you hear how Ubisoft reacted? The company will donate 500k into the building's reconstruction plans, and also, the Notre Dame model in Assassin Creed game will possibly be used as a basis for reconstruction plan! It's a tragedy, but at least we got the technology to recreate the magic from scratch...

So will the face of the cathedral randomly glitch away for some visitors? Too bad it's not old Ubisoft. Apparently they will be adding robots that follow every cathedral visitor's move, gets in their way, and generally treats them like criminals. They call it drone rights management.

And I heard the contract includes a clause that the caretakers of the cathedral have to make sure there is always a cart containing unbelievably soft hay directly below the spire.

[selmiak]

This is sad. Though I'm glad most of the stones and glass is still in good shape. afaik no human died which is alway good when such tragedies happen. this makes it more culturally tragic.

[Cyrus]

In fact, it's possible to donate to the restoration of Notre Dame; I donated â,¬15.

https://don.fondation-patrimoine.org/SauvonsNotreDame/~my-donation

[NickyNyce]

Sadly, there were terror attacks on Sri Lanka churches. I heard there were 875 churches over the past year in France that were involved with fire or vandalized.

If this is true, it makes me wonder what the numbers are across the globe.

[Khris]

Please don't donate for the restoration of a fucking *roof* when dirtbag billionaires all over the world already fell over themselves to pay for it, probably several times over.
There's so so many much more worthy causes.

[Blondbraid]

If there is one silver lining to this tragedy, at least the 180.000 bees living in the beehives on top of Notre Dame survived the fire.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/apr/19/bees-survive-notre-dame-fire

[Ali]

Sadly, there were terror attacks on Sri Lanka churches. I heard there were 875 churches over the past year in France that were involved with fire or vandalized.

The Sri Lankan attacks are appalling - but thankfully unconnected to the accidental fire in Paris. Church vandalism is also unconnected to the other two tragedies.

I'm sure it wasn't your intention, but there are some who are deliberately drawing parallels between unrelated events in order to support the narrative that the West/Christianity is under siege by Muslims.

[Jack]

Don't be so quick to dismiss a possible connection. Those other churches could have caught fire by themselves too.

[WHAM]

Please don't donate for the restoration of a fucking *roof* when dirtbag billionaires all over the world already fell over themselves to pay for it, probably several times over.
There's so so many much more worthy causes.

Yeah, this is one of those really iffy cases of prioritization, and I'm not surprised to see the Yellow Vests are flipping their lids over it as well.
There are countless aid programmes for various worthwhile causes that are struggling to function day to day, but the Notre Dame restoration got million in a day. Sure, I appreciate history and its preservation, but as is often the case, there are more pressing concerns than this.

If there is one silver lining to this tragedy, at least the 180.000 bees living in the beehives on top of Notre Dame survived the fire.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/apr/19/bees-survive-notre-dame-fire

Huzzah for the bees!

[Stupot]

As well as Khris' comment above, I've seen so many memes and people comparing Notre Dame to other tragedies like Grenfell Tower and asking why billionaires didn't fall over themselves to give money to the other tragedies.

While Notre Dame was burning, everyone was all about how sad it was. This great cultural heritage up in smoke. It turned out to have been a little exaggerated and the building wasn't completely destroyed. But if you read Twitter or FB you'd have seen the outpouring of emotion and mourning from everyone. It's little wonder that those with money felt compelled to play the hero, jump on the bandwagon and knee-jerkingly offer great sums of money to help rebuild the cathedral.

But the bandwagon of the not-so-rich turned into ‘oh it's not actually that much of a tragedy, what about Grenfell?' And now those billionaires are being criticized for stepping up.

I think it's kind of pointless comparison. Regardless of Notre Dame one could always ask ‘why don't billionaires donate more to good causes?' It's a good question but nothing to do with famous cathedrals. We're only asking it now because some of them actually have pledged money to a good cause... except this good cause is suddenly seen as less worthy because it's just a building and no lives were lost.

In fact more than 26 million pounds was raisedfor Grenfell, which is a good number, although not nearly enough to permanently rehouse all of the survivors (or bring back those who died). It seems very odd to blame rich people for that, though.

[Khris]

Rich people donate to improve their public image, and because it gives them tax benefits or whatever. It's a calculated move, not a generous one. They don't know what to do with all their money anyway. You have to prove that rich guy X is actually generous, that's not the default. You don't get rich by being generous, or a good person.

And "what about Grenfell?" is a very valid question to ask. One billion got raised for Notre Dame, in like a week. Imagine if rich people actually cared about fixing actual problems. We could literally change the world overnight.

[Ali]

I think it's wrong to say "why are we fixing this cathedral when we could be re-homing these people?" Because there's no good reason to place culture and people's wellbeing in opposition to each other. I think the valid point that the comparisons raise is that billionaires have too much money and can't be relied upon to distribute it responsibly or rationally.

[LimpingFish]

I think it's wrong to say "why are we fixing this cathedral when we could be re-homing these people?" Because there's no good reason to place culture and people's wellbeing in opposition to each other. I think the valid point that the comparisons raise is that billionaires have too much money and can't be relied upon to distribute it responsibly or rationally.

Agreed.

...

That is all.